-----------------------
It's our sad duty to announce that our poor old doggy Ira has passed away. Old age and a weak heart finally has got the better of her and she now lives only in our memories and the pictures that we have.
Here's one of them. I would now change the title to "Go West..."
She'll have her place at the exhibition.

-------------------
Finally the selection process for the images has come to an end! 48 pictures are too much, naturally. But the final decision as to which ones will find their place at the wall and which ones will end up in a portfolio will come when we set up the exhibition room.
All images are now printed and most of them framed - at least those which have a high probability of being displayed on the walls.
By the way: one of the last images that made it on the short list was this self-portrait:
You may ask what that has to do with "Inspired by Nature"? Well, I'm not normally into self-portraits, but my shadow on the earth and the strange maelstrom around my head captured my eye and the natural two-tonedness aided my quest for abstractification. So if you want to know how I look in reality, you have to come to the exhibition: I'll be there!

April 10, 2011

I had the chance to meet Horst Schäfer in person at the opening of the new exhibition "eyes wide open" in Erlangen, where some of his images were shown alongside other local photographers. He was the senior there and I very much liked his images.
Horst Schäfer was born 1932 and started as a photog in Düsseldorf (just like me, in Düsseldorf I mean). He soon went to New York and made his career there and at other places in the US in the 20 years between 1961 and 1980. After that he returned to Germany and now works and lives in Nuremberg (just like me, again).
I asked him how he goes about catching the images that made him famous, most of them not studio work. He replied that he just captures the moment, not planning what to shoot and seldom returning to a scene to wait for better light or other changes in conditions.
That sounds like a photo-journalist to me and while some of his images in the exhibition clearly show this freshness and spontaneity many photos have a "planned" and well thought-out look. But that only shows that the real photographic artist can combine the spur of the moment, the one-time chance, with the professional eye for perspective, framing and a feeling for "the moment it clicks".
Great work!
Horst Schäfer's Website is here.

----English version--------------------
I've finally come to a decision regarding the title of the exhibition at the Zeidel-Museum:
"Nature - inspires" or if you like "Inspired by Nature"
These are both correct translations of the German title and I like the small ambiguity of that.
As a photog I'm inspired especially by nature: Trees, plants, landscapes, the sky, the clouds – but also the traces of human "intervention".
Here you can discover a new angle every day: The light changes, the weather, the seasons – and nature itself naturally!
To discover unusual perspectives of well known photographic topics, to capture the play of colors or of the light and to distill the essence through abstraction are core elements of my work.
So in the end it was easy to find the title of the exhibition. Currently I'm printing the invitations using this image as key-visual.
And the selection of images is almost done, too, as well as printing and framing most of them.